Page 160 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

140 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

below the letter indicated damma tanween (double rfamma),Jat~a tanween or
kasra tanween, respectively'? (this synopsis does little justice to his actual
conventions, which were quite elaborate). During Mu'awiya's reign (d. 60
A.H.l679 C.E.) he accepted a commission to apply this dotting system to
a copy of the Mushaf, a task probably completed c. 50 A.H.l670 C.E.

Figure 10.6: Example if a MU1~aj written in the Klific script, bearing ad-Du'ali's
dotting scheme. Courtesy if the National Archive Museum if Yemen.

This scheme was transmitted from ad-Du'ali to later generations through
the efforts of Yahya bin Ya'mar (d. 90 A.H.l708 C.E.), Nasr bin 'A~im al-
Laithi (d. 100 A.H.l7l8 C.E.), and Maimun al-Aqran, arriving at Khalil bin
Ahmad al-Fraheedi (d. 170 A.H./786 C.E.) who finally altered this pattern
by replacing the coloured dots with shapes that resembled certain char-
acters.t" Centuries lapsed, however, before al-Fraheedf's scheme finally
superseded the earlier system.
Every centre appears to have practised a slightly different convention
at first. Ibn Ushta reports that the Mushaf of Isma'il al-Qust, the Imam
of Makkah (100-170 A.H.l7l8-786 C.E.), bore a dotting system dissimilar
to the one used by the Iraqis.t? while ad-Darn notes that the scholars of

37 Ad-DanI, al-Muhkam, pp. 6-7.
38 ibid,p. 7.
39 ibid, p. 9.